Alumni donation calls are the worst, parody nails the experience

Your phone rings. It’s a number you don’t know, but the area code — it’s familiar. So you figure there’s no harm in answering. But then, it happens: A representative from your alma mater attempts to guilt you into making a donation to the university.

You politely — and frantically — try to end the call, throwing out every excuse in the book. You’re still drowning in student loan debt; maybe you’ll be in a better financial position to donate in a few months (which, of course, is a blatant lie); or, quite frankly, saving up for an HBO Go account of your own is a higher priority right now (because that friend of a friend is bound to figure out you’ve been using hers eventually).

But it’s too late. You can’t escape the calls. Not now. Not ever.

The hilarious minds at Above Average — the brainchild of Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show and Portlandia creators —recentlycreated the perfect parody of this often harrowing experience. To borrow a saying from Robert Ebert, “We laugh, that we may not cry.”